


To keep on breathing for

by Beleriandings



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fingon survives the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, Gen, Heavy Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-22 06:45:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3719029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fingon has survived being wounded in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, barely, by being brought to Gondolin. He has remained in hiding there ever since, but when he receives news of the kinslaying in Doriath he must find Maedhros once more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To keep on breathing for

****

Fingon watched as the eagle flew away over the vale of Tumladen, grinding his teeth and wishing the message had come on a piece of paper so that he had something to crush in his fist. He felt a roiling, raging disgust and horror rising within him, sickening him as the words the eagle had said played over and over again in his head. 

“Finno.”

Turgon placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, his face grave. Fingon turned to look up at him, as though noticing his brother there for the first time. “What… what he did…”

“Stop” said Fingon, pushing his face into his hands. “I know what you would say, that it was inevitable that their Oath should come to this, in the end. Just… don’t.”

Turgon blinked, his mouth twisting. “I was going to say that there was nothing even you could have done to stop him, and not to blame yourself” he said, somewhat frostily. 

“But what you meant was that it was inevitable” said Fingon, glaring at his brother although he knew it would do no good. He felt tears in his eyes. “There is good in them yet” he said, his voice cracking. “There is good in Maitimo. He is a good person, his brothers too, in their ways. The Oath compels them…” even to himself his apologies sounded weak and desperate.

“Do you really believe that?” 

 _I have to. I have to believe it._  “I…”

Turgon sighed. “Finno, if this is true - ”

“Have the eagles ever misinformed you?”

“ _If_  this is true, and they attacked Doriath, then there is no need for you to - “

“To what?” His voice was low and dangerous. “To  _what_ , Turukáno?”

“You don’t have to go” said Turgon. “You can stay here, and - ”

“No I can’t” growled Fingon, turning on his brother. “That’s you, you see. You just sit here, so very safe, I’m sure… but I am a king, and one that I love has done a great wrong, and I have left my people in - ”

“You were half-dead from your wounds when they brought you here, Finno” interrupted Turgon with maddening gentleness. “You had to heal. You had to survive, for what kind of a king would I be in your stead?”

Fingon stared at him, suddenly feeling remorse for his harsh words. “I’m sorry Turno” he said. “You saved me. Gondolin saved me. But I should never have let him think I was dead. I shouldn’t have let this happen!” He pressed the heals of his hands over his eyes in frustration. “I have to go back.”

He left the very next day.

———

He knew that Himring had fallen, many years ago, after the battle; that much he had heard from the eagles and from the scattered remains of what had once been a great people. 

He knew, in theory, what the sons of Fëanor had done. He knew they would be hidden deep in the woods, keeping to themselves, avoiding the world as they licked their wounds. 

None of that prepared him for seeing Maedhros again. 

He saw the fires of their camp first, the little escort that Turgon had convinced him to keep with him on his journey all reigning up at their king’s signal. 

Fingon raised a hand, stretching out his mind into the clearing where the firelight danced, up ahead. 

He knew what he was trying to find. 

He did not quite know whether or not he hoped he would find it. 

Yet there it was; the faint but heart-tearingly familiar touch of Maedhros’ mind against his, telling him that the one he loved was close by. 

At the same moment, he felt Maedhros react to the touch, an electric charge going through him, a shock of realisation. 

_Fin? You’re… you’re alive?_

Fingon studiously ignored the glimmer of fear in Maedhros’ thoughts.

“Yes” he whispered aloud as he strode into the clearing. “Yes, I am alive.”

Then he was in the centre of the Fëanorian camp, somehow, as though he had entered in a dream.

_Is this a dream?_

_Or is it a nightmare?_

There was Maedhros, standing before him, and the look on his face was that of one who’s spirit is cracking down the middle. 

“Fin…” he croaked out, raising his hand before him. He seemed unable to say anything else. 

In that moment Fingon felt a stab of acute love for Maedhros, with a simultaneous twist of horror as he imagined that hand covered in the blood of innocents, fighting for the jewel.  _No longer fighting the great dark, nor fighting on the shore for the means of their freedom, caught in the rising bloody tide of the attack. No, Maitimo, your hand must have made plans, pored over maps with your brothers, made a cold and calculated attack. Oh Maitimo, what have you done?_

Maedhros must have caught the thought, for he reached out to Fingon. Fingon, reflexively reached towards him, before catching himself and drawing back, the memory of why he was here coming back in an instant.  _No. I cannot let myself simply forgive him so quickly._  He looked at the pain filling Maedhros’ silver eyes and thought how disturbingly easy that would be to do.

“Maitimo - ” 

“ _Don’t_  call me that” growled Maedhros, turning away to hide his face from Fingon. He withdrew his hand, curling it into a fist at his breast as though he had reached out and been burned. His voice gained an edge of desperation. “Not now. Please, not now.”

Fingon nodded, slowly. “That’s fair. But there is still the matter of what I am to do with you and your brothers.”

Maedhros raised his eyes. “What do you mean…?”

“Don’t be naïve” snapped Fingon, finding anger came easiest in his current state. “You know that I am your king still - you made me one!” he shook his head, in pain “… and that means that I cannot simply let this slide.”

Maedhros nodded heavily. “I thought you were dead” he said, slowly, after a while. 

Fingon felt another surge of anger, at Maedhros and at himself. “What you mean is that if I was dead you would become a kinslayer all over again?”  _Did I ever truly know you at all?_

“I…” Maedhros drew his fingers through the front of his hair distractedly, a habit he had kept for as long as Fingon had known him. “It was not that simple.”

“Oh, was it not?” Fingon could feel tears in his eyes, guilt at his own cruel words stabbing at him. “Was it not? I thought you were dead too, you know, after the battle. I had to leave with my brother, injured and weak and unable to save you. All that time, I thought something had happened to you, and I  _couldn’t leave_ that damnable city, and I couldn’t…” he balled his hands into furious fists at his sides. 

“You are not bound by the Oath” said Maedhros quietly. “Fin, you don’t know what it’s like, my brothers…” he seemed to change his mind, mid-sentence. “No, I’m sorry. I should not apologise for them. For  _that_.” He sighed, his voice cracking, which did nothing to strengthen Fingon’s resolve. “Tyelko, Moryo and Curvo are dead, for all the good it did. And Tyelko’s servants, do you know what they did? They left the sons of the king out in the woods to die, all alone in the snow, and I was just so… so  _angry_ , Fin, and I tried to go and find them, I searched and searched, because it was all I could do. And all that while, I wondered… was it my brother who ordered that? Or did those cruel followers of his do it of their own accord? I ask myself that question still, every day.” There was a pleading note in his voice, which turned, in the briefest moment, to bitterness. “And of course, then we didn’t get the jewel. I don’t know why I ever thought we would.”

There was a long silence. Then Fingon looked back up at Maedhros. “I take it you didn’t find the children, either.”

Maedhros left out a bitter peal of laughter. “That would look far too much like success.”

“And what of the Silmaril?”

“I don’t know, Fin, I don’t know. The princess Elwing wears it, at the Havens of Sirion. We have sent urgent messages, but…” he waved his hand in the air before him. “Well, Macalaurë still has hope, I think. That we will not need to do it again. Ambarussa, I find it hard to tell.”

“ _Do it again?_ ” The horror washed over Fingon once more. “You would do that?”

“What choice do we have?” Maedhros’ voice was strangled, half broken. 

Fingon thought about this for a while. “None that I can see” he said at last, very quietly. “Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“Of course” said Maedhros, though he did not sound convinced.

They stared at each other for a long moment, before Fingon tentatively took Maedhros’ hand and gave it a squeeze. “I grieved for you, after” he said, brokenly. 

“So did I” said Maedhros. “Macalaurë will tell you. I was not…” he smiled grimly. “I was not  _at my best_  in those days after the battle, shall we say.”

Fingon’s heart clenched as he imagined what Maedhros meant by this, the nightmares, the memories, the guilt. “So much grief” he said, squeezing Maedhros’ hand a little tighter. “They’re calling it the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, did you know?”

“I have heard the name used” said Maedhros.

“All my former realm has fallen into chaos and evil. I am afraid I have not been a very good king.”

“I am afraid that I have become part of that chaos and evil of which you speak” said Maedhros, smiling tightly.

Fingon could not, in truth, deny it, so instead of speaking he pulled Maedhros close against his chest in a rough hug, hating his treacherous self for his stubborn tenderness towards his cousin.

———-

He left the next day, for his old ally Círdan at the Havens, with a promise on his lips to continue south and try to find a way to reason with Elwing, and guilt in his heart.

As he expected, she proved difficult to convince. 

“With respect,  _king_ ” said the princess Elwing, raising an eyebrow at him. “The Silmaril is mine. My father and mother died for it, as did my brothers. My grandmother and grandfather snatched it from the jaws of the enemy. It is the light, the hope of this settlement, and it is all we have to cling to. And it’s mine. I’m not giving it up, and we have nothing more to speak to each other of. Good day to you.” And with that, she left him standing there, and he could not even fault her for it.

Everyone here was perfectly kind to him, but they kept their distance, even when the reports and the refugees came in from his brother’s city, of its fall and the death of its king. His grief for Turgon was a sharp barb pressing into his ribcage.  _I’m so sorry, brother. You saved me, once. I was not there to save you. Would I have been able to do anything against the fire of the balrogs and the dragons? I do not know, but at least we could have died together, side by side._

_Perhaps that would have been better._

He hated the stillness, the slowness of this place, and yet he was still king, and this was where the greatest remnant of his people were now.

He lingered by the shores of the sea, though he did not know why. The rhythmic lapping waves brought back memories he did not really wish to think on, of blood in the sea foam, on his own hands. But he found he could not stop himself from returning. 

He knew the messages were coming, and being rejected. Sometimes he thought of returning to Maedhros, of telling him, begging him to stop, once more. 

He knew it would do no good. 

The thought of seeing Maedhros again, of not being able to stop himself from forgiving him, made his stomach twist.

———-

They came unexpectedly - or, he supposed, perhaps he should have long expected it - in the night, the last ragged forces of the house of Fëanor drawn out by the compulsion of the Oath. 

Fingon took up his sword and fought for his own people, wearily, feeling his heart break by inches as he slew attackers with eight-pointed stars on their surcoats. 

There was never really a choice for him to make, not this time.  _Not again._  

He never saw Maedhros that day, which, he supposed, was at least a small mercy.

The arrow came from above, high on the cliff top, and he did not see the archer, as he clutched a dagger wound in his side, blood on his hands once more. 

The arrow hit him in the stomach, more blood gushing, and yet he fought on, gritting his teeth and biting his tongue, blood filling up his mouth with its iron tang. 

 _Who was the archer?_  he wondered, just before another arrow clipped his throat, blood spurting.  _Maitimo, it could not have been you, you have only one hand. But did you give the order for that arrow?_

_You may as well have._

As all went dark, blood and salt water mixing as he fell forwards onto the sand, Fingon thought about how nothing can ever be saved for very long.


End file.
